Services such as voice, data, streaming video and other services are often provided to home and business customers/subscribers by telecom service providers, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) and so on. Customer premises equipment (CPE) may include various types of terminal equipment to process received MVPD signals to thereby enable subscribers to view, record, and interact with the services. Among the more common consumer electronics devices are television sets, set-top boxes, cable modems and personal video recorders. The CPE cooperates with an access network of the service provider to receive appropriate services thereby.
Traditionally, setting up CPE for customer involves a technician installing the CPE at the customer location, provisioning the CPE directly or by cooperating with service provider personnel at a service network management location, and testing the CPE to ensure that it works for its intended purpose, such as a set-top box (STB) and modem for customer receiving television, telecom and data services at home. The traditional CPE provisioning process is therefore time-consuming and expensive.
Automatic provisioning of CPE is desired to streamline the CPE provisioning process and reduce costs. Existing automatic provisioning techniques are based upon techniques developed for use in provisioning over telephones within the context of a 3G/4G mobile network environment.
However, the 3G/4G network environment for provisioning mobile telephones is the same everywhere in the mobile network, whereas the service provider network environment for provisioning a CPE is not only subject to significant differences depending upon location, there are also many more parameters to provision relevant CPE in such a network. That is, automatic provisioning of CPE within a service provider network requires the provisioning of many operating parameters, provisioning of operating parameters of enormous complexity as compared to mobile telephones, and the provisioning of these parameters within the context of local network conditions which may vary considerably and unexpectedly between locales.